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Comment

You're joking, right? I don't wish to dampen your efforts, but for the sake of reality:

At the time of the DC sniper case, profiler after profiler appeared on cable news, spouting all the usual hype, stating the killer would be a local white guy driving a white van who must have had an intimate knowledge of the DC Beltway area...probably a local delivery driver.

In reality, the actual killers (plural) turned out to be two black dudes, recently from TACOMA WASHINGTON (that's the other side of the continent). They were entirely mobile, living out of their blue sedan and were captured due to a tip from Robert Holmes (of Tacoma) who had seen Muhammad and Malvo back in Washington State, practicing shooting their bushmaster with a silencer and saying how easy it would be to launch an urban attack. This set the police looking for Muhammad, and his car was eventually spotted while the two men were sleeping in a rest area off a freeway exit in Maryland by a guy named Whitney Donohue. He tipped the police, who checked it out, and secured the arrest. Case closed.

Holmes and Donohue shared the $500,000 reward for the capture of Muhammad and Malvo.

"Geographical Profiling" had no bearing on the outcome of the case, and would have been utterly worthless considering the two supsects were from the other side of the country and entirely mobile.

Why do you state that Keppel and his methods solved this case? In truth, I would think the DC sniper case is one of the better examples of why Geographical profiling might, in the end, be utterly worthless if the suspects were from outside the area.

Similarly, in the case of Pickton, the pig farmer from Vancouver, BC., he picked up all his prostitute victims in the same tiny redlight district in downtown Vancouver, but lived some 20 miles away. Please show me how a geographical profile would have proved useful in the case.

Pickton was arrested when a rookie 'mountie' searched his pig farm during a weapons violation charge; she discovered some items belonging to a missing woman. Years earlier, Pickton had been arrested for abducting and brutalizing a "sex worker" who had escaped from his farm, but, unbelievably, the government didn't prosecute him.

At the time Kim Rossomo (not Keppel) was working in Vancouver. He had earlier pushed for the idea that this spate of missing women from downtown Vancouver might be the work of a serial killer. He was ignored by his fellow officers, and no "geographical profile," to my knowledge, was ever written-up, and could hardly have been useful in pointing to a pig farm some 20 miles distance from the neighborhood from where the women were abducted.

If anything, these two cases show the possibility of a killer living miles away. To state that these cases were solved by geographical profiling is entirely unwarranted.

Gary Ridgway was caught through DNA analysis from April 7, 1987 hair and saliva samples along with Kenwood truck paint.

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Gary Ridgway was caught through DNA analysis from April 7, 1987 hair and saliva samples along with Kenwood truck paint.

Nothing to do with Geoprofiling.

The Gary Ridgway reference was for HITS for Keppel who was actually on the Green River Task Force that finally arrested Ridgway. Trevor wasn't just dismissing geographic profiling but Keppel's entire career.

Bona fide canonical and then some.

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Good for you. Because you see it raises an additional question. If the profile shows so clearly Tabram was a victim of the series, then why didn't Kim Rossmo's template include her murder site as one of six predictors when it was designed twelve years ago. Why did he run five. Not that it would necessarily alter the hot zone that much. But it would change it some anyway. We don't know. Colin Roberts did his Geo-Spatial analysis using six, but his thrust was different, aiming to show what was "local" and what was not so much

The hot zone as currently depicted on the geoprofile cuts right through the extra special map John Bennett produced here on Casebook showing the location of the rookeries where the victims lived at one time or another. I'll see if I can find it here in a second and share on this thread.

Roy

Sink the Bismark

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Nobody is claiming it's a science. So it can't be a pseudo-science. It is a tool. That is all. It's no different than pinning points on a map, which is what investigators do! It adds mathematics. I'll take that over just pins of a map, thanks.

What I have shown are the sources that support the claims I made in the thread. So it wasn't a joke. This is very much written on their own publications and documentation of the HITS system.

As far as I am aware, Keppel and the system's use have been extensively published in forensic journals. Meaning peer-review.

I accept there are some papers that claim geoprofiling is useless, but there are other papers demonstrating how it worked. Examples, include Richard Chase the Sac vampire and DeSavlo the Boston Strangler work. Whereas Yorkshire Ripper won't. That's why writing it off is probably not a good idea. Use it, check it, and you might make a hit, or might not. Also, this is the very same tool used during DNA dragnets that have often got the culprit. This is very important when it comes to expenses and logistics. Why you wouldn't want to use it is beyond me.

How do you know that HITS wasn't used for other elements other than geographic profiling and how do you know how it was used in the context of the crimes? They don't specifically say geoprofiling and my reply to Trevor wasn't geoprofiling specific either but HITS specific.

Basically, if people have problems with geoprofiling and HITS, then getting published in a peer-review journal is the way forward. Show Keppel he is wrong and get yourself published is my view.

I am not going to be really using this thread to argue the merit and not of Keppel and geoprofiling. The fact it's landed where it has is significant enough for me to see it is working just fine here.

The experts you are turning to have entirely different views to yours on Albert DeSalvo.

John Douglas actually doubts he was the Boston Strangler.

My name is Dave. You cannot reach me through Debs email account

Comment

The apron placement was/is more important,most likely.But where was he headed from Goulston St..Bell Lane was the most direct route,perhaps more likely,going towards White's Row/Butler St.,etc or Crispin St./Artillery St.,etc. or further.But it could have been towards Flower & Dean St./Thrawl,etc.
Who is to searched,somebody who lived alone,with wife and/or kids,a lodging house dosser.Somebody with a previous conviction? Scant records and 1888 was between 1881-1891 census as a starter.So if he lived in those streets above he only coincidentally found a victim at the end of the month and first week of the following month.,August 31,September 8,September 30,November 8-9,this does not add up or make sense.As has been said in the forum many times he could easily have been a visitor,or lived farther/bit farther away from those streets above,but familiar enough of some streets/alleys/escape routes or lived in the district previously.Geoprofiling does not help.

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Clearly the first human laws (way older and already established) spawned organized religion's morality - from which it's writers only copied/stole,ex. you cannot kill,rob,steal (forced, otherwise people run back to the hills,no towns).
M. Pacana

Comment

The Gary Ridgway reference was for HITS for Keppel who was actually on the Green River Task Force that finally arrested Ridgway. Trevor wasn't just dismissing geographic profiling but Keppel's entire career.

For once,I agree with Trevor.

What did Keppel ever actually do that led to the arrest and conviction of a killer?

Comment

Another chap, whose name I can't remember and who might have been scottish (and still will be if I'm right), used some geoprofiling tool with the Ripper murders, and he ended up with a massive spike on Flower & Dean Street, like a 99.9% chance or something. And funnily enough, the Apron drop direction fits perfectly with that. Not saying it's right, but it's interesting. He did a presentation and it's on YouTube.

Comment

Good for you. Because you see it raises an additional question. If the profile shows so clearly Tabram was a victim of the series, then why didn't Kim Rossmo's template include her murder site as one of six predictors when it was designed twelve years ago. Why did he run five. Not that it would necessarily alter the hot zone that much. But it would change it some anyway. We don't know. Colin Roberts did his Geo-Spatial analysis using six, but his thrust was different, aiming to show what was "local" and what was not so much

The hot zone as currently depicted on the geoprofile cuts right through the extra special map John Bennett produced here on Casebook showing the location of the rookeries where the victims lived at one time or another. I'll see if I can find it here in a second and share on this thread.

Roy

I would like see that map.

The thing about Tabram's murder in relation to the hot zone in Rossmo's model is that Rossmo's model isn't supposed to be predicting murder locations or the residence of a victim. Neither of those is supposed to be popping up in the hot zones.

What one expects to find in a hot zone is nothing major going on. No crimes like the series. A place where the offender doesn't want to offend because it draws undue attention to themselves.

Yet the opposite happens with Rossmo against a backdrop of the Whitechapel murders. Tabram's and Nichols lodging houses appear along with pubs some victims are seen and a murder site of one Martha Tabram a stone's throw away. That's why this gets so interesting.

Also, adding Martha shouldn't throw us into a new murder scene any more than any say adding Stride after Chapman. If it could then we would be able to predict where a murderer like this will strike next (there are models BTW that try to do that, but this Rossmo one isn't one of them).

Let's say Martha was the second or third ripper victim. One would have to ask, why then is the ripper radiating out from a hot zone containing his second or third victims? It's like the person deliberate goes to the site of the crime and then selects a direction and goes that way. Could be a pub they are setting off from, but the apron piece suggests they are going back to something other than a pub... or a lodging house... at least as clients. Wouldn't they all be shut?

Comment

The experts you are turning to have entirely different views to yours on Albert DeSalvo.

John Douglas actually doubts he was the Boston Strangler.

I am not turing to Douglas and haven't brought him up. I didn't bring up Keppel either. Treveor did. Probably confused him with Rossmo.

Albert DeSalvo works with geographic profiling. The hot zone is close to his home. A DNA dragnet today would have got him.

BTW, John Douglas got a few things wrong in his book The Crimes that Haunt Us. DeSalvo has been DNA matched with at least one victim. Douglas was also hired by the Ramseys so his view there is biased. Moral of that story is don't tell your wife your Christmas bonus when she is writing the Ransom note.

Bona fide canonical and then some.

Comment

So if he lived in those streets above he only coincidentally found a victim at the end of the month and first week of the following month.,August 31,September 8,September 30,November 8-9,this does not add up or make sense.
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What did Keppel ever actually do that led to the arrest and conviction of a killer?

Rhetorical question .... nothing!

Keppel identified Ted Bundy as a suspect during the Lake Sammamish State Park kidnappings. He went face to face speaking to him. He didn't have any evidence against Ted and went back to talk to him a second time but Ted Bundy had been arrested after being pulled over carrying rape gear in his car but was let go because they had no more evidence against him and he fled.

That's a damn far sight better than anonymous people on the internet trying to dismiss it.

I often wonder why I don't find such criticisms in the actual peer-review journals and just in blogs? If I was so certain he was crap I would get published with a paper pointing out all these mistakes.